Pfc. Eric Peterson sits with his wife Catie, 19, and daughter Adalie, 9 months, during 1st Battalion 94th Field Artillery's family day Wednesday in Baumholder, Germany. Eric Peterson, an “ammo dog,” distributes rockets to Multiple Launch Rocket System crews. His family got to see the show, but not much of what he does, Peterson said. “I’ve still got that 'mystery man' thing going on.” (Terry Boyd / S&S)
BAUMHOLDER, Germany — He has what he thinks is the best job in the Army.
When Staff Sgt. Enrique Quintanilla, 28, is at work in the battery tactical operations center, a hundred people — or so it seems — are talking to him in indecipherable jargon, over crackly radios saying things like, “Waiting for Foxtrot, Foxtrot 32” and “I’m getting confirmation for you, Bulldog 6.”
And, of course, there’s the ever popular, “Fire mission!”
It’s a job where 100 other people must all do their jobs precisely, or a training rocket ends up in the shoe department at Baumholder’s post exchange.
So you’d have to be pretty confident to do it in front of your wife and kids, launching rockets for Bravo Battery’s Family Shoot on Wednesday at Baumholder.
“Now they get to see the heartache and pain we go through” to make the complicated and lethal Multiple Launch Rocket System work, said Quintanilla, who, as operations sergeant, is the liaison between battalion officers, calling missions for the 1st Armored Division’s 1st Battalion, 94th Field Artillery, and Quintanilla’s battery.
In fact, his wife, Liliana, 32, has seen live fires during battery family days at Fort Sill, Okla. But until Wednesday, she’d never seen so many rockets launched.
“I was just like a little kid going, ‘Wow!’” she said. “At Fort Sill, they fired one rocket on family day. Today … we were seeing it and feeling it” as rocket after rocket launched from early morning through the afternoon on Baumholder’s range.
“It was really, really loud,” though no louder than the stock car races back in Oklahoma, said Misty Theis, who brought daughters Jennifer, 4, and Aeryn, 2, to see Spc. David Theis at work.
All the wives voiced support, and even enthusiasm for their husbands’ exotic slice of the Army artillery world.
“When he first got in, I said, ‘You need to do this,’” Misty Theis said. “I told him, ‘You’re going to like this a lot better than being in the National Guard!’ This is the house of fun.”
The Family Shoot came at the end of rocket tables, an 18-step series of competency tests from the soldier to battalion level. And while families did get to see rockets fly, they didn’t see everything.
As the launchers are getting ready to fire, section chiefs deal with 1,001 issues, from whether the launcher is sealed and pressurized against the toxic propellant gases to making sure the engine is turning the correct rpm, said Staff Sgt. Gordon Means, 25, a section chief.
David Theis and his fellow M270 launcher crewmembers, Sgt. Enrique Cantero and Spc. Gerald Focken, had to work extra hard, said Capt. Brandon Pressley, Battery B commander and one of the officers who organized the event.
Every time the crew was ready to fire, its vehicle had electrical problems, Pressley said. “Three times that happened … and they were so frustrated. But they changed out parts, working at midnight, and at 1 a.m. I got the call from [Cantero] — ‘We’re in the game. Let us shoot!’”
When he goes home at nights, sometimes he takes his job with him, Enrique Quintanilla said. Seeing what he does, she understands, and lets him have a little extra break on his X-Box when he’s really stressed, Liliana Quintanilla said.
At the intersection of their lives is his wife’s understanding that he loves his job and its demands for brains, especially math skills, Enrique Quintanilla said. In fact, he said, “if she were going to join, this is the kind of job she’d like to do.”
